Pine Barrens

Long Island urgently needs to get serious about water conservation, with tough regulations limiting consumption and a regional plan to tap into the water resources of the Pine Barrens. Column by Greg Blass

Suffolk Police and the Central Pine Barrens Commission are seeking the public’s help to identify and locate two people they say dumped eight barrels of toxic liquids in a wooded area in Manorville May 20.

The state has purchased a 38-acre parcel in the Central Pine Barrens core preservation area in Manorville for $945,000.

Ever since the undeveloped acres in the Pine Barrens started to be bought up with a specially dedicated, quarter-cent sales tax-funded bonding in 1987, the intention was as a future, rainy day kind of water resource. That rainy day is here — in spades.

Environmental regulators continue to investigate the MTBE contamination of drinking water wells in the Manorville pine barrens. They have not yet determined the source or extent of the contamination.

Kent Animal Shelter is looking at property across the road from its current facility as a site for the new, expanded kennel facility it needs — a site outside the Pine Barrens core preservation area, where land use restrictions have stalled plans to expand on its current site.

The source and extent of the contamination remains unknown. The state DEC is "aggressively" investigating as health officials continue to test water samples taken from the two dozen wells in the area of Oakwood Drive in Manorville, in the Pine Barrens core preservation area.

High levels of a gasoline additive were found in the well water of a Manorville home, prompting a state investigation to find where the contaminant came from and if it is affecting other homes in the neighborhood that also depend on well water.

Op-ed by George Goode: Richard Amper's hyperbole about the Kent Animal Shelter is the kind of spectacle that's made people lose respect for our political system, where a special interest group can tie our government in knots. Here's why he's wrong, point by point.

Wildfire mitigation plans advanced by the pine barrens commission don't prioritize an area of preserved woodlands that firefighters say pose the most serious threat to life and property, drawing criticism from firefighters and residents at a community meeting last night in Flanders.